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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685919">Waterfall Inquiry</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/corellians_only/pseuds/corellians_only'>corellians_only</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Narcos (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff, Intimacy, Javi needs a hug, Office Sex, Oral Sex, Protected Sex, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, age gap, analyst reader, season 3 javi superiority, so much pining, they are two dorks and i love them</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:42:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,788</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685919</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/corellians_only/pseuds/corellians_only</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Words should not make you feel so much.</p><p>But when Javier Peña meets you, a fresh-faced intelligence officer, words take on a whole new meaning.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Javier Peña/Reader, Javier Peña/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>95</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Start</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neither of you should be here. Strictly speaking, at least.</p>
<p>The Embassy maintains regulations about these sorts of things, you’ve heard in jagged claims that coat the walls in a sickly iridescent sheen. Not the pretty kind that makes glitter sparkle. No, it’s the perverse shine — pyrite and oil spills on tepid water and those cheap kaleidoscopes they sell at county fairs.</p>
<p>Everything, it seems, is whispered here. Here at the Embassy, anyway; Colombia itself is a messy, irreverent place. A dreamlike people, an altered state where God acts as the intermediary between man and demons, not angels.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is why the Embassy is always quiet. The shrill clang of a phone ringing makes everyone start, fearful of keeping demons at bay. Even the PR reps speak in hushed tones, the words soft and soothing like cotton balls dipped in baby oil gliding across skin — crafting press releases each word slotted for a specific purpose, hand-picked with evolutionary precision.</p>
<p>It harasses you, stinging pricks drawing blood from beneath the surface of your bronze skin. Words should move freely, you believe. Like the way the Mississippi runs in during the spring melt: coarse, unimpeded, roiling in caught light, caressing the riverbanks as it soaks up all the world gives it — thrusting forward after a winter fraught in immobility, reveling in flinty purpose.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between words of fabrication and phrases of culled authenticity — the ones that stream from bleeding hearts, bound tightly by shoves and glares and hands that can’t keep still. Hands that grasp for something tangible. Anfractuous reminders of why they must be so careful, why they must keep the truth of themselves limited to brief instances of throwing back light or heat.</p>
<p>There is one man, you know, who thinks like you do — and he laughs at the fact that your jobs depend upon other people being careless with their words. Bandying about locations, codenames, numerals, what to buy at the grocery store. You can almost hear him, that marmalade voice spreading over you, eyes gleaming in smoke and fervor: yeah, carelessness gives us both a job. But it hurts, too.</p>
<p>Tonight, though. When you both are here when you really shouldn’t, you really fucking shouldn’t, not when you’ve been dreaming about him for…for how long? How long have you been in this country that makes a mockery of verisimilitude? Long enough, apparently, for everything else to blur when you look at him, for you to have memorized the way his shirts pull tight over his back when he’s leaned over his desk.</p>
<p>Eyes climb up the length of his torso, the slope of it heightened by the way he’s bracing his weight on his hands. His palms are spread wide and god as much as you think you want to stop the way your mouth runs dry at the sight his large palm, you can’t.</p>
<p>A sigh leaks out. The man in question spares a glance your way, matching the twist of his neck to the cigarette he brings to his lips. “You alright?” he mumbles around the thing, and you grip the desk’s edge a little harder at the sound, at the sight, of him in his element. His exhale — a finely tuned purse of the lips, discreetly directed away from your work — should feel the same as your sigh, but it doesn’t. It washes over you instead, and you rock in the way his existence ebbs and flows in and out of your person. Easy. Like breathing. Like all you have to do is breathe, and he’ll be there.</p>
<p>There are stories about him. When you had been sent down to Columbia as a junior analyst after the death of Escobar, you had quickly dived into the mythos the man. How could you not, when he was everywhere, the scent and swagger of him drawing eyes from every corner of the barricaded building?</p>
<p>The others — the replacements, someone had once termed the batch of new personnel flooding the country to fight Cali — had told you the stories; where they had heard them, you weren’t sure. Huddled over tepid drinks in the bar after work, blazers shrugged off and shirtsleeves rolled up, you had let them regale you of how he fought for years to bring down Escobar, only to be in Miami when his partner did the deed. How he fucks his informants; although, one of them admitted with a sigh, he hadn’t been known to do that in a while. How he was ruthless in the pursuit of justice. A fucking legend, man, someone had crowed about the older man, tongue loose with overpriced alcohol.</p>
<p>And through it all, there was you, eyeing the man himself across the bar. The embrace of his hands against the whiskey glass, the way he barely shuddered at the consuming burn of the stuff when he tossed it back in a behavioral gesture. <em>He seems sad,</em> is what you had thought. Whatever opposite of sad existed in this opulent measure of time by which you both abided — that’s what you wanted to do for him. To make him not-sad. He is aged, perhaps, but not old, rather like someone who could be young if they could shed the pallid skin of responsibility.</p>
<p>But you can’t play God in this country of fallen beings. Being consumes you instead, devolving into an obsession, hanging onto the ledge of yourself — gripping humanity and slicing rocks and graphite that stains your skin even as it slides away, too smooth to be held in hands that ache, swollen, from typing up reports detailing the tumbled-gravel sins of humanity.</p>
<p>He likes you. You think he might, anyway. He consults you before any of the others, and once or twice he’s dragged some Columbian officer into your tiny workspace, asking you to confirm the intelligence on whatever operation he’s desperate to get approved so he can do something. He asks with words that curl up and over themselves like whitecaps, one hand resting on his hip as he nods along to your recitation.</p>
<p>But it’s really his eyes you watch in these moments, aching in fluttering hope whenever they rest on yours. Javier Peña’s eyes when he visits you in your workspace are pleading thermoses of life under sterile fluorescent lights. He likes to send you a half-smile and a nod when you’re finished, tossing them over his shoulder as he escorts the man back to the Ambassador’s office. You are both too good at your job not to love it in some sick &amp; twisted way, and he knows.</p>
<p>Other times he simply drops by. Leaning against your cubicle, he fiddles with a cigarette and chats with you as you work, asking questions that he knows he’s the only one examining.</p>
<p><em>Talk to me about the families of la cartel de Cali, he mutters, the hoarse sound deep and aching in your gut. About their mothers, daughters, sons, cousins, in-laws. Is anyone sick? Do they want to go on vacation? What’s the drama of the week, no, don’t laugh,</em> — he smiles, here, barely, the delicate minutiae of the expression an external revelation of his magnetism — <em>there always is in families. They’re human just like us.</em> And that’s when he sighs, and looks across the hall, where in his office there’s a diagram of the Cali bosses splayed over the wall. <em>Yeah…they’re like us.</em></p>
<p>Javier makes a slowly forms a habit of it, of stopping by your cubical and wrapping you in currents of charisma and truth. He does you a solid, too, bringing you to the attention of your superiors when he mentions your diligence. And you repay him in kind, taking care to slip into his office with new intelligence before the brass gets word. You tell yourself it’s simple mentorship. Mere patronage. He’s paying it forward, helping the young analyst get ahead in their career. These meetings are nothing to him, and they ought to be equally as empty to yourself. It’s just exchanges of information. Conversation between colleagues.</p>
<p>Of course, that doesn’t explain why you look forward to his fingers touching yours when you lend him a pen, or, when he makes some half-whispered joke in Spanish, it makes you shiver. Or the pride that blossoms in your chest, embracing you all soft and balmy, when he considers your words. He handles them like he does his favorite cigarettes, rolling them between his fingers, palming their weight, letting the texture seep into his skin before he lights them on fire.</p>
<p>You drop your pen a lot; he brings a finger to his mouth in thought. You don’t see the way he smiles when you do that, grinning at the muttered curse and roll of your eyes. And he decides that he likes the way you laugh about it; poking fun at your own mistakes, the skin that matches his own gleaming in the warm sun.</p>
<p>He can never do that. Perhaps he should? But he doesn’t make mistakes like that, toss-away interruptions of intended action. The mistakes he makes get people killed. All the more reason to keep checking with you, he reasons, to double-insure the intelligence. <em>Can’t have another mess.</em> And he likes to hear your laugh. Nothing wrong with that, he says. Nothing wrong with something that makes his heart stir and entices the eyes hidden behind yellow aviators to trace the length of your neck a little longer than strictly necessary when you throw your head back in unmarked joy.</p>
<p>And tonight, in his office? Tonight he seems melancholic again, like the first time you saw him across the bar. He keeps shifting his weight, one hand on his hip, and then on the table, and then shrugging off both his jacket and his tie and tossing them unceremoniously onto the couch, limbs extending listlessly. It’s as close to careless as he gets.</p>
<p>Or maybe it’s just the exhaustion fusing into you both. You feel slow and hazy, torn between staring at him and bleary eyes glaring at the map beneath his fingers. if you just look at it longer, you think, you can will it all to fall into place. and maybe if you did he would kiss you, and maybe he would kiss you the way he has always wanted to live.</p>
<p>Maybe if you traced your tongue along his exposed collarbone, penning of licks of hope in the space where his words seem to get caught, where his perpetually open collar leaves him defenseless to an onslaught of physical impressions…maybe then, he’d exhale in blessed adoration, taken outside of himself for just one moment.</p>
<p>He’s asking you a question. <em>You alright?</em> He does that a lot, you realize. Checks in with you. When you answer, he laughs — those delightful eyes seeping warmth into your weary bones as they crinkle in a smile — and he reminds you to call him Javier. He — Javier — has rebuked you at least three times tonight alone, but you’ve yet to oblige his request. If you do, if you let your tongue caress his sacred name and rest in its life-sodden weight, you fear…</p>
<p>you do not know what you fear. you do not know how saying his name will shift the tides in your life. but you know that you will remain forever anchored to him, tethered to his lunar opacity.</p>
<p>“What’s this?” you ask instead, shifting to rest against the desk. You’re beside him now, hip adjacent to his as you look up at him. Latent smoke hovers overhead, and locks of his hair have come undone after the long hours of work and now rest over his forehead small waves. It looks like it aches, being so out of place, and yet so distinctly him. Caught. Destined to arch over his tanned skin, all the while lingering in a place where it should not. Not here, anyway. Not tonight, in his office, far after everyone else has gone home.</p>
<p>“What’s what?” Javier rejoins, distracted, still bent over the desk, still bracing his weight on those fingers.</p>
<p>Rustling papers catch his attention, and he twists to meet your gaze. “This.” You point to the unfamiliar word, stamped out in standard font. “My Spanish is decent, but I’ve never seen this word before.”</p>
<p>The wrinkles behind the shield of his fallen hair press together as he cranes his neck, adjusting his stance to read the word on the paper you thrust in his direction. It clears rapidly though — the visage sailing and unfurling itself when he absorbs the story hidden in-between letters on a page.</p>
<p>He repeats the word back to you, leaning into the sound the way he leans into you, inching closer in his explanation. You stare at his lips, completely captivated — his tongue catching between his teeth — the purse of his lips — the rearrangement of his jaw as it conforms to the aerodynamics of structured syllables.</p>
<p>“Strictly speaking,” he says, eyes roving your face, deep and dark, “it means elf, or spirit. Something ethereal. It’s used in stories a lot.” The words are smooth, smokey, whiskey-like as you let them drip down your skin, the insides of your thighs. <em>“Entiendes?”</em></p>
<p>Your body temperature rises. You can feel it — the way your mouth’s run dry and the paper’s slippery in your grip. Did his voice drop lower when he used the familiar form of the verb, not the formal? You think it did. Oh god, he’s so close, he could just extend a hand across your body and it could rest on your hip. You had never really noticed his height either, always in heels. Tonight, though, the heels are in the corner with his jacket and tie and you realize that he’s inches above you, yet somehow still within reach.</p>
<p>“What’s” — you swallow thickly, desperate to remain professional despite your wide eyes, the tongue tracing your lower lip — “what’s the non-strict definition of the word?”</p>
<p>He gives you one of his trademark smirks. “It can also mean,” he says, “enchanting. Charming. For someone or something to be magical.”</p>
<p>Nodding slowly, you drop your eyes down to the paper again, desperate to avoid his gaze. It follows you, watching your eyes hide even as you adjust to be ever-closer, a bare foot extending outward and brushing against the fabric of his dress pants. “I suppose that makes sense.”</p>
<p>“Say it,” you hear him urge, your head bolting up, incredulous. And you try, you really do, but it’s so new and unfamiliar and you’re so goddamn nervous with him looking at you, that you fuck it up. Words are but the vessels by which emotions themselves are expressed, so maybe the act of speaking should not make you feel all by itself. But it does — oh, god, it does, and you feel like you’ve shrunk in the process, dwarfed by this man with rolled up shirt sleeves wrapped around muscular forearms, who grins impishly around his cigarette.</p>
<p>“Not quite.” He stubs out the thing, and to your surprise, brings hand to your jaw, cupping your chin in-between his thumb and forefinger. “Say it again.”</p>
<p>“No, I can’t; I..“ you protest, and for what? because you don’t want him near you? no, that’s not it, but you’re being branded by his touch all the same.</p>
<p>“Say it again,” he commands again, more gently this time, his words accompanied by an encouraging nod.</p>
<p>You comply readily, sounding out the syllables. His strong fingers manipulate your movements, guiding you in pronouncing the difficult phrase. It’s forceful and noble, a tender yet compelling influence that teaches you how to wrap yourself in the meaning of the word as much the word itself. You’re tingling; is it from the thrill of achieving or from his sturdy hand against your bare skin?</p>
<p>He doesn’t back away when you’re finished speaking, but holds your stare. Dimly, you register the steady crescendo in your breathing. He’s not immune to your proximity either: his Adam’s apple bobs as he pushes down the deficit of hope flooding oppressive maxim of his presence. Times stretches as you remain caught in his hold, coursing through you, carrying you downstream in brash, coarse recklessness. Are the emotions you swim in those eyes yours, or his, or some measure of both?</p>
<p>The pads of his fingers migrate, drifting to rest along your cheek and tumble into his touch like a moth to flame, or fish to water, or whatever trite phrase people use to make sense of such profound belonging.</p>
<p>Javier is mesmerized with the way his fingertips trace your cheekbones, the shell of your ear, along your jaw, returning to outline your lips.</p>
<p>“Tell me to stop.” His voice scrapes along your bliss, and you force your eyes open to see that he’s moved even closer, closer-than-close, so tight against you that you’re nearly leaning back over the desk.</p>
<p>“Do you want me to?” His eyes are dark and still now, but for the way they’re trained on yours as you whisper fate into existence.</p>
<p>“No — <em>fuck</em> — I shouldn’t, I —“ his jaw shifts again, this time in agitation, but it is you who does the deed, cutting him off, reaching out to tug on his collar. The action pulls him forward, pressing himself against you, caging you between the desk and the broadness of his firm chest.  And you do know it’s firm now, at last slipping your hands underneath that truant fabric and gliding along his smooth skin. His hands find your waist, gripping your hips as he meets your lips in an open-mouthed kiss.</p>
<p>He — Javier, now — kisses you a single-minded intent, letting his lips slide over yours lazily, over and over, memorizing the imprint of you against his mouth. One hand drifts upward again, cupping your cheek as he tilts your head slightly, letting his tongue delve into your mouth and trace your teeth. It makes you gasp, and you retaliate with a gentle nip to his lower lip, silently begging for more. Javier moans into your mouth, the pressure sending a jolt of pleasure through his body.</p>
<p>Tightening his grip on your waist, Javier lifts you, placing you firmly on the desk, feet dangling a few inches from the floor. You know what he wants before he even has to ask and you give it him readily, wrapping your legs around his waist. Javier’s weight conforms to your own, molding against your body as you press into him, back arching in your submersion to his touch.</p>
<p>He is so <em>eager;</em> his kisses drench you in a deluge of incubated affection interspersed with need. Grasping at his shoulder, you pull him even closer, your other hand anxiously fiddling with his buttons as you sigh, reveling in the storm of his attention. Slowly, painstakingly, driven by a clamoring need for oxygen, he drags himself away from you, parting slowly, ever-loth to break the kiss.</p>
<p>You can’t help the shy smile that dances around your lips when you look up at him, standing above you. His chest is heaving, out of breath, hair somehow even more mussed than it was before. You suppose you can touch it now, so you do, two fingers brushing aside the fringe on his forehead.</p>
<p>Time, and space, and whatever else this stuff is made of have prevented from this alternate reality. until now. it has broken through the dam and caught you up in its awakening, broad and unrepentant.</p>
<p>Javier captures your hand as it lowers, pressing a kiss to the side of your palm. He’s so tender it makes you ache, and you wonder if this is why he stopped fucking his CIs. He requires something more intangible than what they could give him. “Javier,” you whisper.</p>
<p>He hums a question, rubbing a thumb over your knuckles as he watches you consider him, emotion lapping at the shores of unkempt eyes.</p>
<p>“You asked me to use your name. Earlier, I mean.” Should you feel embarrassed? Kissing a man several years your senior? Maybe you should. But you don’t. There’s a cordial warmth spreading through you, bolstered by his gentle touch, the outward connection of him and you that’s been built through months of inanimate remembrances.</p>
<p>“I know.” Javier nods and leans in again, his breath rippling across your skin. “Can you say it one more time, <em>princesa?</em> They say you need to do something three times” — a kiss to your cheek — “to make sure you really —“ a kiss to your forehead — “understand” — a kiss to the corner of your mouth.</p>
<p>The words fall out of your mouth, splashes of unrestrained affection dappling each letter. “<em>Duende,</em> Javier,” you murmur against his lips. <em>“Duende.”</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The two of you, Javi thinks as he gazes upon your sleeping form, need to stop making a habit of doing things you shouldn’t be doing.<br/>Some actions ought not to be performed, not even when there’s no audience to witness an execution of the mirror-self. He knows this. He thinks of Pablo. Of Pacho Herrera. Of the Rodriguez brothers.</p><p>And he thinks of you. Javi thinks of you as you exhale some hitherto un-expelled sigh and curl deeper into his chest (an expression of chaste lust, your body matching the desires of a dream-ridden soul caught in a thin &amp; porous moment).</p><p>But is it so? Is it so that the truth of being has shifted so profoundly that he can enact such green caresses of hope previously barred to him? Maybe you are a mountain-mover. You must be. You must be, in order to use such simple tendencies like stumbling Spanish and fingertips tracing the outline of his collarbone and to weave him an analysis so astute he cannot compete. Is there a gritty residue of confirmation bias on his tongue, from where he licked you open with panting sighs? Maybe. Probably. He is greedy for all things with a flavor of divinity, and you — you are no exception.</p><p>For you are good, so good, at what you do. So adept at the way you piece together information (faster than Fiestl and Van Ness, certainly; but they’ve learned that the hard way). Exercising tender patience as you listen to him unload the information he needs into words that spill together. When he talks to you, the words come easily, as unblocked ice dams of hardened requirements. And oh, <em>por dios<em>, how you taught him how to join himself to you (or you to him, or do the semantics matter?)</em></em></p><p>
  <em>
    <em>Javier knows things, and he knows people. He knows people, he thinks, better than things. Forgetting this fact of his existence is harder these days. There is so much exuberance in young faces and willful challenges in others, obstinance that refuses to yield like onyx leather. It pushes and pulls and bends but it — but it will never tear. The leather will simply accumulate stretch marks as wrinkles in time and space.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>You make him forget his insistence to forget. Rousing Javier in vibrant suspirations, you are so thankful to be alive that it makes you ache, and his heart feels full. Should he feel guilty? Should he feel guilty about you next to him, when Carrillo’s widow wakes up every morning to an empty bed and phantom fingers clutching her to an equally as phantasmic broad chest?</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>It is now that you stir; Javier’s thoughts a fillip to your dormant limbs. A surge of affection courses through Javi and he tugs you closer so that your cheek rests flush with his bare chest, his knee a new, but welcome, weight hooked between your thighs. “Hi,” he whispers. When was the last time he used such careless, luxuriant speech? No time to consider now; he’s swept up in the current of your hands brushing up and down his side, thumbs assaulting tender skin with precise sweeps of reflexive inclination.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>Your hands aren’t as tough as his; Javi noticed this when they intertwined with his above your head and he looked down on you, panting your name and letting you grip onto his steadiness as you came undone. And in the haze of those infinite moments, he had noticed the way your fingers fit between his perfectly, the way they had a deft weight to them, worn on your wrists and the places where the pen presses into skin when it’s not being dropped with a curse and a sigh. (how many times does it happen a day? Javi regrets that he’s not there to see it every time, because every time, it makes him laugh).</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>A kiss to his cheek yanks him back to you and he fixes you with a gentle smile; you’re looking up at him shyly. The counterbalancing virtues of pride and hope are writ large in your wide eyes. “Hi,” Javi whispers again, raspy with use and sleep, drawing out the word to wrap you in its gritty endearment.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>“Hi, Javi,” you murmur, smile widening as he reaches down to brush his knuckles against your jaw. There’s wayward locks of hair dangling over his forehead, and you like it. He looks boyish, almost --  or at the very least, younger. Or perhaps not quite younger but — messier. More human. More alive. His fingers travel north to cradle the back of your head. you are precious to me. When had you become fluent in the language of his touch? Maybe you always knew. Maybe you knew the first time he propped himself against your desk and it was like you were drowned and pulled from raging seas all at once; desperate for air yet equally as drawn to the force of his life. Maybe it was the first time your lips met his, murmuring Spanish against his tongue. You had been the one propped up on his desk that time, wrapping your legs around his waist for more more more. Because Javier Peña is full of life even as he tries to bury it, oppressed by ghosts and expectations that subvert the normal realities of a human existence (and he is still human enough to nurture a broken heart).</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>It had somehow taken less time and more time than you thought for him to take you home. How long, was it, since he had kissed you? You’re not sure. Everything has transmuted into a blur of maps and passing notes in file folders and stares at cross-agency briefings with the Ambassador. Sometimes, too, you linger late at night and he kisses you once, twice, three times and even more in his office, shutting the door and hauling you into his lap. His hands are the ones that explore your sides, then, as you fiddle with his hair and work your way across his jaw. Javier had taught you how to undo a tie and you had never learned anything more eagerly, grasping at the fabric encasing his neck with fervor.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>You had never taken to a new skill so rapidly: until last night, when you had taken each other in gasps and sighs of truth. Last night there had been one lingering kiss too many — and so many that it was not enough. What had started out as shared whiskeys and cigarettes on his couch had ended in his bed, and you would have been okay on the couch, but Javi had insisted on the bed. <em>i wanna take you to bed, baby. for real.</em></em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>Javier had guided you, one hand on the small of your back, leading you to his room and shutting the door. It was then that he had cursed, leaving you standing in a swath of moonlight, giggling, as he ran back to the living room for his gun, lying restless on the table beside the now-abandoned glasses of amber liquid. <em>it’s not funny, baby,</em> he had said, placing the weapon on the bedside stand. But he had chuffed out a laugh all the same, eyes soft and bright as he took in your features, mouth curling into a smile.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>That same mouth had rapidly become insistent, moving against your lips, your jaw, the shell of your ear. Javier laid you down on the sheets and shielded you with his body, repeating actions that made your breath hitch and moving on when your reaction was anything less than wholehearted abandonment to the way he made you feel. The room was quiet but for whispered utterances of his name and soft praises exchanged as prayers. <em>right there, so good, please more, fuck baby, javi don’t stop.</em> He said your name, engraving the essence of yourself back into your skin, accompanied by gentle queries. <em>is this okay?</em> and later, after your <em>yes,</em> spotting the slight furrow of uncertainty in your brow, Javi took your hand and guided it to his length. <em>can i show you how?</em> The fire in your eyes when he had taken your skills and made them even better glimmered as a supernova of unrestrained desire. Your assent had been so bold in its softness, and your hands only stilled in their exploration of his body when he took them in own, a silent plea to relax, hooking your knee over his elbow. <em>i’ve got you.<em> it’s for him, too, your fingers masterfully exploiting every ravine and aching tributary in his older body, and it had been so long since someone kissed him with their touch that he’d lose himself before focusing on you.</em></em></em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Javier traced constellations in your eyes as you cried out for him last night, and now that he has done it once, he never wants to stop. The stars have been replaced by a softer glow, he realizes, looking down at you now, and while Javi is no stranger to the dull sheen of slick and sweat, and used to spending covert hours by your side, he is unused to the two of those things put together. His hand is on your hip; the other, still tucking you close to him. What should he do with them? Christ, he needs a fucking cigarette. His hands are too pure against your skin. He thinks they should be shaking with the newness of waking up and not feeling out of place.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Did you sleep well?” he asks instead. Thick fingers slip down and start tracing absent-minded circles on your bare shoulder.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Your response is muffled, masked by the rustling of your bodies as you curl yourself deeper into his touch. “This is nice,” you murmur, voice thick with hazy sleep, eyelids already drooping closed again, taking in his deep breathing. “<em>You’re nice,</em> Javi,” you add. “Even if — even if you don’t believe it.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>——</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Hey,” Javi calls as you stride past his office a week or so later. The open door beckons, a threshold that ails from the groaning worlds that pull apart — even as they gather in spotless, twisted black holes of knowledge.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Softness pierces you. Every feature of this man’s aspect conjures a haze of undisturbed urgency. When you turn your head, pausing, you think there will be the suggestion of a smirk forming across those features of grecian excellence.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>And as is his way, this man of spurious contradictions takes pride in surprising you, even if he doesn’t know it yet. In place of a smile there's the barest hint of a frown, faint creases trenching themselves between his eyes.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“You were quiet in that meeting,” he states, leaning against the door jamb. “Why?” Arms crossed over his chest only serve to accentuate the solidity of his person — broad shoulders encased in that impossibly tailored suit — but something else has caught your eye.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>his hair looks pretty today is the only thought that skims across your mind, beaming forth from some far-repressed abyss. Not pushed down enough, apparently, because he notices the way you stare and he tilts his head, indicating you to follow him into that forbidden space.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>(How is it, then, the way you stare? Your gaze, he thinks, can only be described as something so bright as to be devastating, in a quiet, fuzzy sort of way. A quietness that screams, a revelatory oxymoron that unbends itself in hazards of time and space. This is the point in which he realizes that time and space are not linear but curved, achingly contiguous and sans harsh angles).</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>And yet it is time that careens him, kneading him out and in, back to this instance in which you trail him into four walls, a disparate measure of realness in a fabricate space.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Javi repeats his question as he reaches behind you and closes the door.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“I’m sorry, sir,” you reply. Your fingers tap against the stiff fabric of your pencil skirt, resisting the binding sensation to clinch your fingers around themselves in a fist.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>He purses his lips. “That isn’t an answer.” He keeps his demeanor quiet even as he draws you in even further to take a seat at the desk he now leans upon (does he ever, you wonder, sit in a chair?).</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“I’m asking you a question, <em>analyst.</em>” Javi spits the title out like a curse, or a drug. Usually it is, when he’s doing cross-agency work; it’s always a fuckin’ nightmare and now with the new laws passed because some people up in Washington think that they know better than the ones doing the goddamn work it’s that much harder to get the intel he needs —</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>With you, though, those words beckon as a call to action: softer, yet more imperative. Like he tries to remind you of something. What, exactly, you can’t say. Only seven full moons you’ve seen in this country, and yet you have learned that there is a difference to his words. How some snag and others bite and still others wrap around each other like raw silk.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>He is strong and sure, hero of the year and you are…you are none of those things, your hands tingling as you explain you’ll make sure everyone else gets the appropriate reports, it was too long to drag into a meeting like that, you’re sorry for the trouble.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“These the reports?” he asks, indicating the folders in your hands. When you nod, he reaches down, tugging one from your sweat-tinged grasp and opening the flimsy material with a well-practiced flick of his thumb. Dark brown eyes move rapidly across the printed text before skimming down the rest of the page, another small frown appearing in his brow before he turns to you with a sigh.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Ma’am, this report is so goddamn short that I think even the President himself would read it if it was in his daily brief -- and we all know how he doesn’t tend to read those. For you, he would make the exception.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Invisible heat rises in your cheeks, taking root there. The word grow would seem apt but for the way it implies a conscious decision on your part to encourage its spread, the absence of consent a white blankness that makes your eyes contract against the harshness of lack. Salty, tangy sweat slicks your hands even more, damp reminiscences of your palms imprinting themselves on the remaining files, visible (if not wholly tangible) outlets of the way this man sends you spiraling.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“That’s your opinion, Agent Peña,” you manage. The echo of his gilded-edge <em>“ma’am”</em> still smacks in your brain. A rolodex of brumous memories forms in your mind — his name, his sheets, his touch, what would it be like for the positions to be reversed with your name your sheets your touch, a plea of <em>yes ma’am</em> from his soft lips that taste of whiskey and coffee and cigarettes as he lays beneath you —</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Javier's too busy staring at you in respectful puzzlement to notice the subtle dilation of your eyes,  and for once, you are happy with the way he hyper focuses on one thing at a time, even if you’re the object of his current scrutiny.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Why didn’t you speak up?” he asks again, a little harsher this time, a little louder. People walking by his office turn their heads in curiosity but Javi ignores them, brown eyes boring into you. “This intel is important, ma’am. It could change the whole operation. If the godfathers are really —“</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“I <em>can’t,</em> Javier.” The rebuttal is short and barbarous but it’s the use of his name that makes his speech halt on tilting railroad tracks. You have only said his name in this building twice, that night when you kissed him like you meant it (and you did then, but you still mean this now). “I can’t. This has the potential to disrupt highly classified operations conducted by other agencies. I can’t put them at risk in public; this information needs to be distributed quietly. You’re not the only one who can’t afford mistakes.” The lines of your words soften, rounding in genuine concern. “You’re not the only one with lives on the line.”  </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>You had always thought that the phrase resounding silence was something you read about in books, or heard in conversations with pseudo-intellectuals. How could a silence be noisy? But now you do; now, you get it. Javi’s tongue caresses the inside of his lower lip, one hand resting on his hip as he shifts his stance. Considering as the words settle in the space between you. Who will touch them first?</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>As conflict-seeking as he is professionally, Javier avoids conflict in his personal life at all costs. He’s not exactly a model human being. I shouldn’t, he had murmured before he pressed his lips to yours (you, an archetypal Daisy to his dreamer Gatsby). It’s not that he could not kiss you, it was it he could, and did, all too easily. And now here you are, all gentle strength in the face of his righteous indignation — oh, how great is his regard for you, a magnanimous chasm. What was it Stechner had said? (Javier doesn’t really need to ask; he revisits the words far too often). <em>“If there were any justice in this world, Javier, you’d be in jail.”</em> Is this it  — his insistence on showcasing your abilities the last nail in his proverbial coffin? Will he ruin operations, endanger lives, for the sake of your admiration?</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>No. He cannot. He knows this. Maybe you know it, but your fingers tap out a nonsensical rhyme on the folders in your arms and your brow furrows and there are bright shines of near-tears of your eyes, staring at him in the silent language of fear. You look young, now -- more your true age -- awash in open vulnerability and he is struck once more with the loudness with which you live.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Javier,” you murmur with leaden weight, wanting to drop the files in a scattered heap on the dull carpet, wanting to reach up and caress the creases from his eyes, to kiss him until he falls over, to card through his hair and the give him everything that is real enough for him, and you, to be real, too.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>The man himself says your name in reply, a half-hoarse, half-whispered thing. aching erupts deep in your chest, and if there weren’t six or eight or ten hours left in the workday, if you weren’t so new, if his job wasn’t hanging by a thread, if the door was closed, if, if, if you would love him for it — for his offering, for inspiring a continued suffering in your soul. Colombia is harsh but you knew nothing of longing until you met him and daydreamed idly of his fingers and tight shirts and how his suit jackets spread across broad shoulders.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>But there is. Real facts of existence crash into both of you with a howling gale and the moment passes — just long enough for small smiles to blossom, understanding flowing in two, three heartbeats.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Stay, please, he wants to say. But once again he chooses something that’s more practical, constrained by place and circumstance. “Thank you for your time,” Javier says. “I apologize for keeping you. I’m sure you’re quite busy.” Turning his shoulders (<em>so sturdy,</em> you think again) so his back is to the door, Javi lets his gaze drag over you, head to foot, eyes catching on the small instances of exposed skin at the collarbone, at your calves, your wrists.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Lips perk up into a smirk. “It was no problem at all, Agent Peña. I’m glad we were able to clear some things up. And I’m afraid I’m not as…busy as I would like to be.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>A step closer. “Oh? Do you need a bigger challenge than taking down the biggest cartel in the world?”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“I like complications, Agent Peña. Tidiness scares me.” You make a show of checking your watch. “Is that all? I have another meeting.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>A shake of his head, a set of his jaw and Javier follows you as you exit his office. “Who with?” he asks with tightly-bound diction, but the tension dissipates with a laugh that comes more readily than he expects. “Nah, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. I get it. Operational security and all.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Your returning smile is all the thanks he needs, but a new hunger nestles in Javier’s heart as he watches you walk away, a gentle sway to your hips. Sometimes he thanks God for mismatched justice.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>——</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Your co-workers hover in that strange space between late afternoon and evening, where there's still lingering work to be done, but somehow not enough of it to hold anyone’s interest as they count time, marching in place, waiting for sky to bleed into faint hues of red and blue and grey.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>But you? You’re staving off vibrant alternations of near-panic over how much there is to do and utter boredom, eyes glazing over the millionth transcription of the day. <em>Sí, vale la pena, ten cuidado,</em> whoever had been on the phone had said.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Some words are violent — thrashing, turbulent, white waters of truth. These are tulle and silk and crinoline. They prick at you and your mind subconsciously plays a game with you, substituting a tilde to fourth word. Is Javier Peña <em>vale la pena</em>? Is he worth it? Are you being careful? Careful with your bodies, maybe. But your heart? Who knows. And you are oh-so-tired of caution. Living in Colombia, working against the cartels, is living in insulated danger. You could die at any moment, but you shouldn’t, the guards and ID badges tell you. There’s so much security that if didn’t you didn’t hear gunshots outside of your apartment building, or notice that your favorite fruit seller was suddenly <em>uno de los desaparecidos</em>, or listen to Javier’s play-by-plays of the violence he sees on the streets, you wouldn’t know you lived in a war zone.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>(That’s not quite true, of course. You know exactly what’s going on. You read it all day, every day. You help write the Ambassador’s reports. But somehow it’s more real when you hear it from Javier’s lips than when you read it with your own eyes).</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Those questions crowd you, pushing and shoving letters and intricate phrases against established traffic patterns. Your head ducks down, lower, lower, almost pressed against the mishmash of wood and paper and paper clips that loiter on your desk — like if they linger long enough, they’ll make a home in your head and you won’t be able to evict them.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Slowly, people trickle out — your desk mate and others locking up their filing cabinets. The packing up of briefcases is accompanied by dull sighs and unhopeful <em>see you tomorrow’s</em> in the pyrite optimism that tomorrow will bring the team closer to peace. You’re not sure about that either, anymore, but you’re new enough to have some genuine confidence for Colombia’s salvation.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Fishing for a pen, your notetaking is the other thing you hear in the dim space. Work is absorbing and you’re glad of it; you would rather focus on that than other things. Namely, the gentleman in the suit down the hall who smells of cigarette smoke and whose shirts are always perfectly starched.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>He’s stalking toward you, sans cigarette, sans folder, sans anything to keep his hands anchored to himself. They sway slightly, matching his almost imperceptibly uneven gait. But so absorbed are you that you miss the steady thud of his footfalls, and he’s afforded a rare chance to observe you unawares.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Shoulders: hunched slightly, self-indulgent slope of your back highlighting other curves. Javier can nearly hear you think — not quite the letters themselves but the shape of them, curlicues and rising flames and zigzags that bounce in your head, trying to wrangle chaos into an order slightly more intelligible. He watches you try to make it make sense — a wrinkled brow and bitten lip painting the scene in a pastiche of jewel tones. About halfway into his journey, the pen slips from your grasp and he watches the routine performance unfold: a sigh, a swear, a bend of muscles as you reach for the wayward object.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>When you right yourself he’s there, leaning over your desk. Weight bracing on his forearms, you can see the tautness of the muscle there and you almost - almost - hitch your breath. You swallow instead, thick and heavy in your throat and look up at his with a soft smile.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Still here, Agent Peña? I was under the impression everyone had gone home.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>His head shakes loosely, rattling back and forth. “No, I — I’m still here. Wanna come work in my office? There’s more room to spread all these files out. And,” Javi adds with a shrug, “the couch is probably comfier than your desk.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>You wonder if there’s a ploy in there somewhere — a game to steal a glance at the forbidden files? — but when you look into his widened eyes you see concern. and something harder too, something more akin to want.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>The trip back down the hall is soft, you taking his hand with a gentle squeeze and not bothering to hold back a grin when he reciprocates, clutching you even more tightly.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Let’s get you settled, yeah?” Javier asks, setting your files down on the couch and helping you get comfortable before returning behind his desk. When you get up to close the door, he’s next to you in a flash, as though he’s worried you’re going to leave. Oh, he’s close, so close as you push it shut and his nose is tracing your ear and his chest is warm against your back and it would be so easy to turn around ask him to fuck you against the door but —</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>But no. There is work to do, and after a heartbeat (or ten), the two of you return to your spots, supposedly with the intention of working well into the night.  </em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>All is still for several minutes — thirty? maybe forty-five? surely, you think, not more than an hour — and you should be working, you really really should. Javier is: he’s typing away, the occasional whispered fuck slipping between chapped lips. And you? You’re reading without seeing, distracted by the way shadows cross his face and how his chest looks with a loosened tie against a plain white shirt; shit, are you — are you getting turned on watching him type? Watching him press thick fingers into the typewriter with such force is admirable; it’s clear he never properly learned in school the way that you did. But lord, you’re transfixed by them — their precision, the roughness you know they carry in calloused fingertips, how firm they are in your grip.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Finally, Javier catches you staring and rewards you with a small smirk, the one that drives you wild. “See something you like?” he murmurs, that swollen rasp setting a fire down your spine.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“And if I did?”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“Can’t say I would complain,” he concedes easily, leaning back in his chair for a moment before changing his mind and striding over to you. Displacing the reams of paper in your hands — they make an unceremonious new home on the floor — Javier sits and drags your feet into his lap. Your shoes he does away with, too, gently setting those aside and rubbing circles into the tendons of hardened muscle.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Throwing your head back, you exhale in thanks and turn your attention to Javier, meeting his eyes. “You don’t have to, Javi,” you say, and he shrugs.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“I know. But I want to. You look like you need it.” A finger runs lazily up your arch, his blunt nail dragging across the skin and making you shiver. “You haven’t picked up a new piece of paper in ages, baby. What’s on your mind?”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>There are so many things you could say. That you should say. Things like <em>my meeting sucked; Stechner threw me under the bus; there’s so much to do.</em> Eyes betray you in lieu of speech, however, independently drifting down to the place where his hands are on your bare skin.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>Javier tracks the movement easily and lets his fingers rise, flitting around your ankle. “Oh?” he asks, a teasing lilt to the way he says your name. “What was that? I missed it.”</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>You move to faux-kick him, thrashing out, but Javier is too quick and catches your feet before they can make contact with his body. “So sensitive,” he tsks, but a ghost of a smile hints at his lips and yours. His eyes travel up the length of your legs, drinking in the way the fabric of your skirt lays against your thighs. Continuing up your body, Javi’s gaze lingers on the bare skin exposed by the partially unbuttoned collar of your blouse, finally reaching your face in time to see you wet your lips in an unconscious gesture, deliciously taken aback by the forwardness of his stare.</em>
      </em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>
        <em>“I was thinking about you today,” Javi whispers, returning attention to your sore feet, fingers pulling at the muscle with graceful touches. “I was thinking about what would happen if I kissed you in that meeting. Just hoisting you up on the table and kissing you senseless.” He pauses, gauging your reaction, but your words have been stolen by his boldness. “Maybe I’d lay you down on the table, hm? Have you spread these pretty legs for me” — when did his hand reach your knee, palm just brushing the inside of your thigh?  — “yeah, I’d do that, so I could look down at you while I fuck you. and if you made a mess on the table, well, someone would have to clean it up, wouldn’t they?” Javier cocks his head and narrows his stare, raking over your features once more, as if he’s recalling some memory from the distant past. “You like the way you taste, baby, don’t you? Didn’t you tell me that last week?”</em>
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        <em>All your features contract at his lewd words, lips pursing and eyes squeezing shut and your inhale a dagger in the sudden tension blanketing over the two of you. “Answer me,” Javier commands, tracing nonsensical patterns on your thigh as his hand slides up your skirt, lightly scraping against the fabric.</em>
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        <em>“Javi, <em>cariño</em>,” is all you can murmur, shifting slightly to give more access to his caresses. The structure of the skirt is restrictive though, tight paneling caging you in. you strain against it, continually seeking a place in which the taut fabric will give slightly.</em>
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        <em>Javier watches you struggle, observing the forward canting motion of your hips. Lost in your efforts, you almost miss the way your foot slides against his cock. almost. But not quite. Once you’ve noticed, it’s difficult to ignore the faint outline already appearing against his dress pants and you brush your foot against it again, a devilish smirk rapidly piecing together on your features.</em>
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        <em>“Don’t…” Javier warns. His voice drops to a ragged whisper and if you didn’t know better you would say that there’s desperation threaded into his warning. But the Javier Peña you know doesn’t beg. He’s the rule maker, and when you ignore his plea and repeat the motion once, twice, three times, four times, the bulge growing with each movement, Javi’s reached his limit.</em>
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        <em>“That’s <em>enough</em>,” he spits out, pushing your legs out of his lap. Reaching for you, muscles throb under his pristine shirt, shadows forming in the creases as the room seems to dim. Your vision confines itself to just him, now. and suddenly there is nothing, nothing but a lingering heat behind your eyes as he kisses you with an open mouth and you slip into darkness. You know only his tongue scraping your teeth and his knee resting between your legs and the linty sound of you straining for you, fabric rubbing against fabric.</em>
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        <em>Warm hands — Javier’s — brush over your stomach, dipping down to your hips in quick, purposeful movements. “Where’s the — shit — where’s the zipper?” he mumbles against your lips, fingers seeking out the release. in the back, Javier, you reply, and suddenly those steady fingers are gripping your hips and flipping you onto your stomach with ease.</em>
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        <em>“Is the door locked?” you hear him ask, and you nod as best you can with your head resting on your hands. He pauses, and though you can’t see it, his hands are near to trembling with the need to touch you where you need it most. “Is it?” he repeats, and the zipper grinds down the moment a fervent, yes, yes it is exits your lips.</em>
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        <em>Razor-sharp actions tug the skirt down your body and he tosses the thing aside in a careless flourish. The article crumples as it hits the floor and will definitely need to be ironed again but you don’t care, you can’t care, you can hardly breathe as he helps turn you over again.</em>
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        <em>“I want to see your face,” he says, and somehow that is the most intimate thing someone has ever said to you. <em>I want to see your face while I love you.</em> And at long last he spreads your legs, molding one over the side of the couch and shifting the other your knee is to your chest, foot still anchored to the leather. Fingers crawl their way to your center and the two of you stare at each other all the while, Javier's dark brown eyes gleaming with a diamond’s fire.</em>
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        <em>The first brush of his fingers against your panties makes the both of you whimper softly. You, at the relief from just a slightest hint of pressure; him, from the blatant way in which you soaked yourself so easily for him. Pushing the thin fabric to the side, Javier runs a finger through your slick folds, quickly adding another when he realizes one isn’t enough, those thick fingers you were thinking of all evening at last making their way inside of you. No, one isn’t enough, you are too — too desperate for him, too wanting, too craving for him. He feels it not only in your dripping arousal and the way that you grind against him when he fingers your clit.</em>
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        <em>It’s in your silent moan and arched back and the way you lean into him with every opportunity. You are so brazen Javier forgets your office self and sees only you — who you are when you are with him is bold and unapologetically present for him and all thoughts of this morning’s spat about intelligence is thrust from his mind.</em>
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        <em>For your part, why should you not show it? <em>Ten cuidado,</em> the transcript had said. Fuck that. Fuck caution. Fuck Colombia. Fuck this false sense of security, enveloping you in a living lie. Fuck everything that says you could lose your job what are you doing, sensible girl, this is your career, you’re in the office. But most importantly, and in the most literal way possible, <em>fuck</em> Javier Peña.</em>
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        <em>That is precisely what you intend to do. Sitting up, you start to swing your leg down to meet the other, fully planning on descending to your knees for this man. but Javier, the man of foiled schemes and frustrating bureaucracy, always has a way to get what he wants. You are far less obstinate than your supervisors, thankfully, and it only takes one thrust of his fingers inside of you for you to collapse back on to the cushions with a strangled gasp.</em>
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        <em>“Fuck, Javier,” you whisper. There’s no one to hear you if even you did scream, but the need to be quiet smothers you. There's an element to forbidden sacredness about him touching you like this in his office, letting his personal life take precedence over his work life for the first time since he left Lorraine at the altar. Tell me to stop takes on a whole new meaning now than it did when he asked to kiss you against his desk, but Javier receives the same response as he did then: reaching down, you guide his fingers even deeper inside of you, swearing in slurred Spanish when he curls them against your walls.</em>
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        <em>“Don’t stop,” you beg, shamelessly moving against him. “Please — shit, Javier — don’t stop.”</em>
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        <em>“‘m not gonna stop,” Javier confirms, fingers sliding in and out you easily with the rapid accumulation of your wetness. “What do you need? Tell me,” he urges, his voice flecked with silver gravel.</em>
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        <em>“I need — oh — I need you to talk to me,” you say, biting your lip. The muscles in your stomach coil with need and oh, you’re close, you just need his voice, just need his fingers in a little deeper —</em>
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        <em>“You’re so fucking good to me,” he murmurs, leaning forward to cover your body with his. He begins punctuating his words with kisses to your neck, letting them fill in the blanks to his own half-formed paragraphs. “So good, letting me fuck you with my fingers right now. Yeah, I know you like it; I know you like it how I’m fucking you on my couch, and tomorrow morning, you’ll be the only who knows.” Sucking on your pulse point, Javier ruts into you lightly, his cock heavy against your hip and your own body rises to meet him. “Oh, fuck,” he breathes. “You like that?” A high-pitched whine confirms his suspicions and Javier does it once more before pulling back. “If you come on my fingers” Javi promises, “I’ll give you what you want, okay?”</em>
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        <em>The words are good, so good, his voice spiking your blood like sugar water. But you need something else, something even more. “Your mouth, Javi,” you plead. “Please, I need — I need your mouth.”</em>
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        <em>You think he swears under his breath, but you can’t hear him over the rush in your ears. “Is that it baby? You want me fuck you with my tongue?” Javier looks around the office. “Are you sure there’s no one else here?”</em>
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        <em>“No — no one,” you agree, breathless as you work yourself against his hand. “Please, Javi, <em>please please please —“ </em></em>
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        <em>Javi withdraws his fingers and you immediately protest, mewling at the loss. “Sssh,” he soothes, tucking his fingers under your panties and sliding them off. “C’mere, baby.” And he leans back and taps his breastbone, looking up at you with a challenge gleaming in his eyes. He half expects you to deny him, to retract your statement with a dignified, no Javier i will not sit on your face in your office but you surprise him, climbing up his body and settling your thighs on either side of his head.</em>
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        <em>The first lick, a broad stripe from your entrance to your clit, already has you twisting into his coiffed locks, moaning. Javier is nothing if not a quick learner, and he already knows your weak spots — how you like it when he tugs lightly at your clit and lets his tongue swirl around it, how you like when he fucks you faster and faster with his tongue. It’s not long before you’re grinding into his open mouth, mumbling increasingly incoherent phrases of Yes, Javi, just like that, fuck, right there as the fire in you starts to burn an insatiable white-hot heat as you near your peak. “C’mon, sweetheart,” he encourages against you. “Come all over my face, baby.”</em>
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        <em>And that is all it takes for you to come apart for him, gripping on his dark hair while his hands steady your shaking thighs, his name a verdant prayer as he triggers your release. He fucks you right through it, taking advantage of your pliantness to take everything you’re willing to give him.</em>
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        <em>Slowly, oh so slowly, you peel away from him, adjusting your weight to rest your body against his and leaning in to kiss him. You taste yourself his lips and you give yourself permission to kiss him languidly for several minutes. Javier sighs into your mouth and raises a hand to rest on the back of your neck, thumbing circles into your skin as his other hand lazily runs up and down the outside of your bare thigh.</em>
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        <em>“You alright?” he finally asks, pressing a kiss to your cheek. Your beaming nod makes him smile, and Javi pulls you down for a kiss that’s almost boyish in its impetuousness.</em>
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        <em>“Can we go home?” you whisper when he finally pulls away.</em>
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        <em>“Yeah,” he nods, tracing the outline of your jaw. “Yeah, baby, let’s go home.”</em>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>what do you do when there are no words?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For once, the two of you are right where you should be.</p><p>Javier Peña enjoys doing the right thing — even if meting out the grayscale infinitives of wrong from right is increasingly more difficult with each passing day.</p><p>This is how he thinks of himself. As a changeable man with drifting thoughts, drifting morals, unable to point to any sort of north, relative or absolute. How can he make you understand that he floods and then aches with arid dryness when you are to him the deepest blue? The color of water far out in the ocean, shimmering and reflective, pushing sunlight back to her maker. A color so deep something in his soul shifts in recognition, roiling with shivering enthusiasm that maybe it has found something to complement his own charismatic depths at last.</p><p>What he thinks he likes most about you is the way you twirl around the seductive strip tease of truth against fiction. He doesn’t stop to consider if fiction is ever more right than truth itself, his eyes flooding with unknown, unexperienced affection. He may be termed a tidal pool for his ponderous, mercury-metal soul: changeable in light and weight, in depth and perception (and in perception, the truth and reality of things changes). </p><p>He’s fallen, fallen, fallen, but is he drowning or floating in you? Are you consuming or supporting him? Will you drag him two miles down just to crush him with the weight of your love — grand and magnanimous habits of expression too much for his droplet-laden soul? You are so much for him, himself merely a tidal pool to your depths, and yet he can never get enough. Always waiting for the moon to shift and the water to oversaturate the sand and wash over him again, gushing into his being in foaming, tickling waves.</p><p>(This fiction he tells himself is one he uses to stop his heart from hurting so much. Javier’s not sure if it works anymore).</p><p>Tonight, he hates doing the right thing.</p><p>With a sigh, Javi sits up, cool sheets pooling around the v in his hips. Lips curl in a rueful smirk when he reaches for the cigarettes on the bedside stand. <em>I’m trying to quit,</em> he had told Lorraine just a few months ago. Had he meant it? He thinks he did.</p><p>But one cannot survive on humanness alone in Colombia, and within twenty-four hours of arriving, he had found himself digging in a strange purse for a sweet kick of nicotine.</p><p>Javier recoils slightly at the memory, shoulders hunching as he rests his hand — the one with the now-lit cigarette — over his knee. He had never mentioned the one night stand to you, but neither had you brought it up. Should he have? He hadn’t even met you then, he reasons, taking a drag. But Christ, why is there still a funny feeling settling deep in his stomach?</p><p>She had been the first person he had slept with on this rotation to Columbia. And she would have been his last, if not for you. He didn’t have time, he said. And he has a reputation to uphold. It doesn’t look good for rumors of the poster boy basing operations from back alley brothels to ripple outward ever more, until he can no longer control the narrative.</p><p>(That one is a lie as much as it a truth).</p><p>But the right things — yes, the right things. Tonight that looks like Javi smoking a cigarette in bed, unable to sleep as he thinks of you. It’s probably a good thing that you hadn’t been able to come over after work anyway, he reasons listlessly. He had been so tired he had shucked off his clothes and headed to bed, exhausted from another day of a constructing a fragile operation on vague intel.</p><p>Now though, he is awash in thoughts of you, bobbing slightly in oscillations of the same scenario — all of them ending with you in his bed, his arms wrapped around your waist instead of the pillow. Ideas tumble more easily without you to pin them down and grant them a focus, physically wrangling them into subordination with your hands, your kiss. </p><p>Are you still at work? Or was it your footsteps traversing the staircase of the shared apartment complex that had awoken him? Begrudging the time you spend tending to others through reports and schemes and phone calls stretches beyond his pay grade, even with the extra 9k from his promotion. </p><p>But Javier doesn’t need to know, and he’ll never ask. He is a tidal pool, at ease in spaces of tender ambiguity. </p><p>You have stepped into his home just the once, twice, seven times. His mind keeps track like proverbial notches on the headboard. Orderly and just: and out of place, in the wreckage of his daily life. </p><p>Maybe he’ll ask you tomorrow, Javier thinks, haze finally overtaking him as he stubs out the cigarette. Maybe he’ll ask you tomorrow what you’ve been planning so furiously that you’ve been coming home in the wee hours of the morning — 12am, 1am, 2am — and still at work before every one else the morning. </p><p>He won’t, though. Javi won’t. He knows this as closes his eyes and shifts the pillow deeper into his embrace, gripping its pyrite softness. He wishes he would. </p><p>——-</p><p>It’s raining. Unfixed dashes of the wet stuff single you out and you are plagued by whimsical notions of letting it drip down your skin. There’’s not even a window for you to look out and keep pace with the way that they trickle down bulletproof glass — no hint of nature here except for the dried flowers you keep in a small vase on your desk. </p><p>There is no distraction but yourself today — yourself and these aching thoughts of rain. Javier’s not even here. If he is, you haven’t seen him. </p><p>The remembrance of him strikes a match. Or tries to, anyway; it’s sodden with the sopping weight of missing him. </p><p><em>it is so long since my heart has been with yours</em>: that is what cummings had said, wasn’t it? The poet had always seemed to exist in a realm beyond yourself, pushing together word and worlds as entities just beyond your grasp. </p><p>Perhaps you understand now. You think you might, stumbling into a stuttering dimension more real than anything you’ve ever known even as uncertainty permeates everything else you do. But him: Javier, you can touch, and you can lay with him, and feel the way your words sink into his skin and how your blood runs hot because of his. </p><p>Measurable, tangible outcomes.</p><p>The way your heart feels when you are with him — or without — him, though. That is not precisely a feathered texture along which you can glide ink-stained fingers. It’s something different, an ache settling deep in your diaphragm when he’s gone that rises and dissolves when he returns to you. </p><p>Lately, the only tangible you have known is paper slipping through swollen, over-wrought fingers and the strain of tired eyes. And even that is not something you can fix or touch, but are forced to experience with little hope of alleviating its bright sting. </p><p>The last time you had touched him was last week, when he had managed to sit next to you at a meeting and drag his fingers up the inside of your skirt. Javier’s boldness surprised you, and you had bit the inside of your cheek so that the crimson velvet of your desire would not spill out and into prefabricated words. When you glanced over at him, the only hint of his own fiery battle was the pressing together of his lips and silent working of his jaw. Dark eyes were firmly trained onto the sheet of paper. Firm, and listless, brushing aside all those suffering from ennui; his palm calid and insistent as it glided up your smooth skin. A gentle squeeze, a slight curl of fingers, dragging along one another. i’m here. and i miss you.</p><p>And then it had been over, his hand skimming away from you and back into his own lap as the meeting concluded, meeting your gaze for a cursory nod of recognition before exiting the room with near-alarming efficiency. His blazer moved in a deft swirl of fabric behind him, aching to catch up to the rest of his body. </p><p>Part of you almost wonders if someone had found out, and that was why you had seen so little of him. were the higher-ups conspiring to keep you apart? To thrust so much highly classified work into your aching and over-laden arms that you couldn’t even speak to him without someone whipping their head in fear that the DEA would catch wind of your division’s operation? Javi’s own endeavors, you knew, were being thwarted at every attempt he made to make sense of this labyrinthine maze and oh, how it made you ache for him and the <em>thumos</em> of his heart. </p><p>You are unprepared for the way that emotions roil up within you rapidly — like water placed under heat and pressure, bubbles bursting forth from beneath the surface. </p><p>There is anger, you think: anger for yourself (it is unprofessional to fight back tears at 2pm on a Thursday); for the way others may render themselves fit to sit in judgement your burgeoning caresses. Wallowing fear trickles throughout your body. It is hot and sweeping and irrational, accompanying yellow-dusted vehemence and frustration. Tiredness — no, exhaustion is the better word to match your drained pipelines of energy — slips and slides over everything, and it’s hard to see through the muddled haze. </p><p>You miss him. You miss Javier with a fond (that is, foolish) abandon. </p><p>You think of his hands: under your skirt at the meeting, grasped in yours, above your head as he fucks you. Fingers gliding over your own as you reach over his desk for a pen (perpetually in search of oxymoronic ink). You think of way his gaze sears into you, wildfire flames licking at your skin. You wish he would brand you for all to see — resin and oil paint the medium by which he marks you with teeth that tug and pull at the hidden parts of you, gently prying away the barbarous obstructions to that light which ought to reside in you unhindered. You think of the swell of his eyes and the unstitched seam of his lips, a languorous tongue that forms biting words and fighting words and darling words that incite the gush of your devotion to flow ever more freely, forming a river between you and him. It’s a treacherous river with boulders and skips and runaway streams that prevail over the dominant current, dragging you and him away from each other. </p><p>It’s not just his kisses; you miss the way he fucks you, too. And you miss fucking him, meeting his gaze and watching the way tension dissipates under your neon touch (stabilizing and soothing to his listless mind). Javier’s praise and unlocked dams of emotion soak into you in whispers and soft moans and echoes of your name and you will gladly drown in him every day if he will let you. </p><p>And if time will let you, and life, and decorum, and everything else. the initial wanting of him was nothing compared to having him but never feeling him. </p><p>But you sigh, and duck your head down to, pushing your bloodshot eyes  — now clear of tears, and still fuzzy with the ache of missing him — to focus on your work. There are <em>narcotrafficantes</em> to put behind bars. There are lives to save. and none of them care for your well-worn heart.</p><p> </p><p>—-</p><p>Javier wonders if you ever leave your desk. <em>maybe she sleeps there,</em> a rabid voice says, but he kicks the thought away. He knows you return to your apartment. More often than not, he hears it. It being the twisting keys and the gentle scrape of your soles echoing in the corridor, brushing along with just enough temerity to awaken him from a defaced slumber. </p><p>The plastic water cup on next to your files is empty, Javi notices. This is both good and bad, the nuance of both swirling in shades of complexity. No chance of spilling irreverent drops on sacred words. A security achieved at the cost of making yourself small, the expanse of yourself confined to one place, one chair, one task. </p><p>He wants walk to your desk and say hello. He wants to do other things too — to carry you to his admittedly messy apartment and lay you down and kiss you softly and hold you in his arms so tightly that you could never stray too far. </p><p>Protector; provider. Javi designs to be both and neither. </p><p>But yes: he craves to walk over to you, and lean on your desk like he used to. He can see it take place in his mind, so clearly in the slattern mess of verbs and nouns (none of them proper). </p><p>Colleagues (yours) mill around in the space between your desk and him, crowding you with insistent queries and generalized atoms of belligerence. Jaw muscles shift and eyes contract in trembling calculations of hope and distance. Should he go? Does want — closer to need, now — outrush the guiding streams of ought to? </p><p>No. Not today. He is damp with emotion for you; if he takes off his jacket and leans against your desk he worries it will all seep through his dress shirt. A watermark of his heart imprinted for all to see. </p><p>When it comes to you, fear overtakes Javier gently and softly, like the way the sand welcomes the coolness of the moon.</p><p>He makes to turn away, reluctantly rotating his shoulders (his heart) away from you and withdrawing into himself once more. In his glacial movements he fails to catch sight of your eyes themselves, alighting on the gentle twist of his upper back as he turns away. So, too, he lacks the kaleidoscope of refractory emotions that glaze over you, spreading across one, two, seven moments. </p><p>He cannot speak to you: so he screams instead. In his flinty actions, you know, there is cobalt-blue pain, and silken need. There is an Atlas-weight on his shoulders with none of the gods’ wisdom to provide some prolific moral to his suffering, or to yours. </p><p>Lately you feel like your task is not Herculean, or even that of Atlas, but more akin to Prometheus. It is rewarding in its stimulation while punishing in its apparent futility. And like Prometheus, the pain never lessens (you don’t really get used to reading about death. you just. learn to expect it).</p><p>Tonight when Javi turns away from you in a rote action (it seems like the two of you are always forced to walk in opposite directions, these days) it hurts. It fucking hurts — in your back and in your stomach and all the way down to the soles of your aching feet. </p><p>You remember the way he had rubbed them for you on his couch: dexterous fingers both ginger-like and gingerly, gentle in their movements as they enticed you to crave more. The remainder of that night feels like a watered-down drink, one that you remember consuming but are later unsure if you had it all. Did he really take off your skirt? Did you really let him devour your with his open mouth? Did he really take you home and fuck you with a wild tenderness (biting your shoulder to shuffle the depth of his care that urged to spill from his tongue)? </p><p>“Ma’am? Can you take a look at this?” </p><p>Someone’s melancholic summons rips into your reverie and you comply with their soft demand and abandoning thoughts of Javier. </p><p>For once, the both of you are right where you should be. Not leaning over desks or hinging on open doorways. Not slipping into the basement storage room for kisses; not slipping notes into each other’s reports; not desperately wresting eyes from the torrent heat of the other’s gaze at meetings, shielding that singular bit of understanding about each other’s countenance from the avaricious hands of others. </p><p>And you have never hated anything more. </p><p>****</p><p>Descartes was never your favorite philosopher, but trudging up the stairs that night, you can’t help but wonder if his so-called dream argument was true, after all. If you can’t trust your senses and you can’t determine that you’re not dreaming, what can you know about the world at all? </p><p>Somehow things have drifted out of focus and there’s a heavy weight nestled just above your heart, acting as ballast to keep you pinned down even as all your limbs beg to drift away. Drift into sleep, into nonbeing, into another form entirely, they don’t care. You don’t care either.</p><p>The words trigger a memory — dark and bold inks of Javier turning away from you sketch across your inner vision. </p><p>And now you are quite confused, fingers anxiously rubbing against the keys in your palm in tight, staccato movements. Him, you are quite certain you care about. Aren’t you? Even as he orbits just outside of your reach? Weariness wins this round and conflates your stubbornness with your anchored hope. You do not <em>want</em> to care that you are slighted by the way he ignored you. </p><p>Crackling pain — his apparent rejection slicing across raw skin — cannot fully obscure the one truth you now cling to. Something, some sort of inclination or passion or affection for him pours into you and you drink it up each day with robust enthusiasm. Even if you know nothing else, even if you cannot tell if you are dreaming and all the world and everything in it is a farce, you drink him. </p><p>Your life could go on without him but it would never be the way you want it be. Dehydrated, shriveled, restless.</p><p>You know this now: now that you have existed, slept, feared, <em>felt</em> without his presence at your side and his thumb brushing across your cheek and his eyes that pull you apart like cardboard puzzle pieces. </p><p>Almost there: one more flight of stairs and you’ll be able to walk down the hall to your apartment and fall into bed. An empty bed, but still a bed. Should you — should you call in sick tomorrow? Maybe; it’s almost difficult to breathe you’re so tired. </p><p>But if you did, you wouldn’t see Javier. But if you did, he might forget to miss you, his eyes skipping over the empty spot at your desk. But if you did, the force of gesture and language would close in on you and box you in, sitting in that apartment by yourself. Without him.</p><p>You sigh, starting to turn the corner on the landing to head up the final steps when you feel the prickling presence of another person lingering in the hallway. The knowledge fuses into your nerves the same moment it does theirs, and a hand reaches out in the dim light, closing in around your wrist. </p><p>Reason races, competing with some latent instinct that urges you to wait before making use of your keys in your other hand, now clutched around sticky fingers.</p><p>“Another late night for you.”</p><p>There are too many things to feel at once upon hearing his voice. The impossibility of it reels you — or maybe it’s just the shock — and Javier moves his hand to your shoulder as you sway slightly. </p><p>“Easy. Easy,” Javi murmurs. “I’ve got you.” His voice rakes over you, raising goosebumps as it does so. Slowly he guides you to face him, taking a slight step forward so he’s only partially shaded in shadow, like he’s instructed some painter to wrap the whole evening in the mystery of tenebrism. </p><p>Knowing him, he would. </p><p>A lift of your head from where you’ve been staring at your hands tells you that he’s half-naked in the hallway, dressed only in his jeans. Those are unbuttoned, too, but you’re sure that if you reach around him you’ll find his pistol securely tucked into the waistband. </p><p>“Trying to get caught for public indecency?” The joke is lame and the whisper is weak but Javier smiles softly — the faintest tug of his lips — and nods. </p><p>“Something like that.” A shift of his hips and he’s leaning against the entryway. The sight of his bare skin — broad shoulders and strong arms and the soft swell of his belly — nearly elicits a whimper from you, as though you’re suddenly comprehending that he is truly in front of you in your waking life. </p><p>Maybe a squeak does fall from your lips, because Javier lets his fingers trail down your arm and takes your hand. A quick one-two tug and you’re even closer to him than before, nearly tripping over his toes. </p><p>“Come on, <em>querida</em>,” he whispers, bending down to scoop you up and into his arms. cradling you bridal-style, he walks the two of you to his apartment, dropping a tender kiss to your forehead at your question, slurry with fatigue. “We’re going to bed, baby. that okay?” </p><p>The messy kiss you manage to press to his shoulder as you assent is the faintest allusion to the idea that maybe — maybe — you missed him in the same way he missed you. </p><p>Inside isn’t much brighter than the hallway, but you can catch the golden glow of light in his eyes and the soft waves in his post-shower hair. And oh, you’re not sure you have the words to describe the how he nurtures you, gently resting you on his bed. Javi asks if <em>you’ve eaten; if you need water; if you want to shower.</em></p><p>A shake of your head; a nod of his, and he begins undressing you with the sheen of satin nobility. First the blazer is shucked to the side, followed by deft fingers working at the hook of your dress and pulling it over your head. Javi bends to his knees and removes your shoes, pressing a kiss to each ankle before he stands again and rummages for a clean shirt for you to wear. You think he’ll hand it to you and be done, but no, he unclasps your bra and peels it away. Raise your arms, please, he requests so he can cover you in the soft fabric of his t-shirt. In some dim corner of your mind, you’re surprised he even owns t-shirts. </p><p><em>up you go</em>, is his next instruction, guiding you to the bathroom, where he pulls out your toothbrush. </p><p>“I hate having people watch me brush my teeth,” you mumble, thankful if not a bit petulant in your worn-out state. </p><p>Javi nods fondly and steps away, back into the bedroom. “I remember.” </p><p>He’s folded back the covers when you return and you crawl under them gratefully. Oh, fuck, they smell like him. You’ve missed it; you’ve missed your own clothes smelling lightly of it after a lazy weekend afternoon spent at his place. Sleep threatens to overtake you, now, but you resist valiantly, not wanting to squander a moment in his presence. Everything is fuzzy again, this time with warmth as you feel more than watch him place the gun in the bedside drawer and pull the jeans away from his body and turn off the light. </p><p>“Come here,” Javier requests, extending his arm to make space for you against his warm body. “Please, baby,” he adds, the words sounding shipwrecked to your muffled senses.</p><p>You were already halfway there when he had spoken, depraved for the feeling of his skin against yours. </p><p>“That’s it,” you hear him whisper, breath hot against your cheek as you settle into his chest, curling into his side. “Good girl.” your thigh comes to hook across his hip and his chin rests against the top of your head. Javi’s inhale is sharp and colored with longing; the exhale releases sweet and kind. </p><p>You’re surrounded by all that is him, and you could cry at the way you sag against him. Tears swell up behind your eyelids but don’t spill. What would you say if you cried? <em>thank you, i need you, i miss you, i want you, never again.</em> Practicality swoops in: <em>what about the alarm, Javi,</em> and you think you hear him say that <em>tomorrow is saturday, baby.</em> </p><p><em>thank you,</em> you want say, but sleep tugs, insistent and rude, and all you can manage is a reverent whisper of his name before it takes you. </p><p>Tender remembrances trickle from his lips long after you’ve fallen asleep, inextricably wrapped in him. Javier’s nose traces your forehead and his fingers lift from their spot on your spine to trace the remainder of your features. It’s dark but he doesn’t need to see you. He doesn’t want to, even. He sees you everyday. What he wants — what he needs — is to feel you, to relish the way your breath has synced with his and your lips have parted slightly. By touching you, he can run his hands the length of your body and confirm that you’re still whole. </p><p>—-</p><p>The orange glow of precious warmth is the first thing you notice. hovering in that subliminal space between wakefulness and sleep — embracing both at the same time — there are two other sensations that recall your attention away from yourself even without opening your eyes. </p><p>Instead of Javier’s chest, your head rests on a pillow. Sprawled out on your back, your muddled brain concludes that this is Javier’s doing; you doubt he’d let you drift so far away from him even in sleep. </p><p>The man himself hovers over you: deep rivets punching into the mattress on either side of your body where his elbows support his weight. The weight of his heart presses down on you, too, solid and comfortable, a stealthy feeling gliding all over your skin and passing through layers of cells into your very core at his presence. </p><p>Javi’s kissing you. Not your lips, but everywhere else he can reach with brief duck of his head. Keeping yourself locked into semitransparent darkness you feel him instead: his soft mouth on your cheeks, on your neck, across your collarbone, clamoring their way up your throat again in a more insistent salvo. The drag of his lips and slight coarseness of his mustache beckon forth a sharp inhale through your nose, a tender tensing of shoulders (a small thing, but you know he knows you’re awake now). </p><p>But he plays along, dragging his tongue over your ear. Some of his unruly hair brushes against your cheek and a nearly-irresistible urge to giggle surges forth, rowdy and insouciant. Like he can discern the import of your own emotions, Javier stops you before it can break through the surface, halting your mirth with a raspy greeting that sends shivers of a different kind down your spine. </p><p><em>good morning, florita.</em> A tender movement and his body weight shifts above you, allowing one hand to curl slightly around your hip. <em>woke up</em> — another kiss, more urgent — <em>woke up with you next to me and i</em> — the kisses seem to give him strength to continue — <em>querida i just need to taste you, please.</em></p><p>Need is not a subtle thing, not with him: it stabs you sharply, pulling you firmly from any lingering vestiges of sleep and dripping into you instead. Already aching from Javier’s prosaic touches your nod is desperate, repetitive. </p><p>“Words, baby,” Javier urges. The familiar refrain (<em>i need to hear you say it; tell me when to stop</em>) leads you to relax slightly, molding your body back into the mattress. You never feel unsafe with him but his insistence is endearing. Lips press against your shoulder. “Gotta know you’re awake.” </p><p>Eyes still closed, you nod, more sedately this time. “Please, Javier.” It’s borderline plaintive, the way you request for him and not for the first time you wonder if your desire is something to be ashamed of. But pride dances across your skin, too, pride that somehow you have captivated this capable and nuanced man so thoroughly that he will wait up for you, that he will put you to bed, that he will wake up desperate for your pleasure. </p><p>Is that an hint of a <em>thank you</em> crossing his lips? Maybe it’s yours. so often it seems like he and you are the same in these moments, swapping between paint and brush, decorating each other’s bodies with lingering images of reciprocal understanding. </p><p>This time, he does kiss your lips, a rapid, impulsive meeting of mouths that’s just long enough for you to realize it happened. Javier slides away before you can kiss him back, moving in-between your legs and pushing one to the side. It’s with precise, delicate moments that he curls up the v neck t-shirt and peeling away your panties with what is probably an impish grin, boyish in accomplishment as his fingers slide over the arousal that’s accumulated on the fabric. </p><p>You can imagine how he looks, hooking a broad hand under your thigh and inhaling your scent before nudging your center slightly with his nose. Javier’s hair is probably curled over his forehead and at the nape of his neck and his eyes dark. Thick fingers are spread over your thigh and the other, on the opposite hip and you can see them, almost, the spacing of the broad digits and how he uses them to keep the both of you steady, firm, true. </p><p>And oh, the ducking of his face between your legs, experimentally tasting you. Easing into it. Javi chuckles softly as he pulls away slightly, the hand on your hip trailing down your outer thigh. “Already, baby?” he murmurs, referring your gathering slick. </p><p>“Please,” you implore again. <em>it’s been so long, i need to feel you</em> goes unstated; you don’t need to say it. he knows. he always does. </p><p>His tongue responds not with words but with touch, delving back into you. It’s lazy, almost, the way he eats you, parting your folds with broad licks. hHs nose presses into your skin but you don’t even notice, absorbed in the wet heat of his mouth. </p><p>It’s with gentle circles to your clit that he breaks your silence, drawing from you a shuddering gasp that entices him to smile against you. and he does it again, and again, slightly faster each time until you’re panting out soft whimpers for him. </p><p>“That’s right, <em>princesa</em>,” he mumbles against you, and the title makes you keen, your mind piecing together a direct line from your first kiss to this moment and blurring out every night without him in between. </p><p>he teases at your entrance before finally delving into you in firm, broad strokes. Arching your back, a cry teases forth, sounding something like <em>oh, god, javier,</em> but you’re not sure. everything is hazy, licking heat and swaddled warmth and still the scent of him, and now you, in the air. </p><p>It’s too much and yet not enough; your hands drift down to hold his head against your cunt and your eyes flutter open to watch him. The vivid illusion you had fabricated (so similar to the ones you thought about, over these long weeks) pales in comparison to the reality of him right in front of you: corporeal and real. And yours. Still yours, after these weeks of wanting. </p><p>Your gaze, hooded though it is, catches Javi’s attention and he manages to meet your eyes for several long moments, observing the way your brow furrows and your chest heaves under the thin t-shirt with the rush his attention injects into your bloodstream, rapidly absorbing all he offers. </p><p>Still maintaining eye contact, his tongue returns to your clit, gently flicking <em>r-right there, right there, javi, please cariño.</em> He pursues your pleasure ruthlessly, guided by each moan, each pleased gasp, each breathless instruction that falls from your lips. Eventually he tugs at your hips with both hands and pulls you all the way against him, his entire mouth working against you in such a way that it makes you grind into him without even realizing. Babbling praise, you encourage him, asking for <em>more, please,</em> telling him his mouth <em>feels so good, you l-look so good like that, javi.</em></p><p>Groaning into you, Javi moves his tongue against your clit, impossibly faster-faster-faster until finally he hits the spot that makes you tip over the edge, tipping your head back with a wordless cry as he continues to lap at you, not moving until you push him away slightly. </p><p>Rocking back on to his heels, Javi tilts his head in a practiced, habitual moment, appraising you as you prop yourself up on your elbows. </p><p>Laughing slightly at his smirk, you reach out to him, fingers outstretched. “Get over here, you.” </p><p>The tease feels like the breezes of home, to Javi, like climbing trees and ditching his homework to watch the sunset and drinking beer with his father on the front porch in high school. </p><p>“Not even going to tell me good morning?” he replies, crawling forward. “So rude, <em>florita.</em>” </p><p>Rolling your eyes, you latch onto his bare shoulder and guide him the rest of the way, smiling against his mouth. “Good morning, Javi,” you whisper, eyes flickering between his eyes and his lips. The first kiss is sweet, laced with the taste of you. </p><p>Pulling away after a few long moments, you’re suddenly strikingly aware of Javi’s nudity. Not that you didn’t know, you just…hadn’t really noticed. Here, like this: in bed, looking down at you with what might be adoration streaming from his features and sunlight dappling through his thin curtain, he is easily the most beautiful man you have ever seen. His soul is less obscure, here. more filtered, more pure, more filled with his pure substance. </p><p>A brief exchange of words and now you are the one hovering over him, one arm caged across his chest while the other plays with his hair. </p><p>“Good morning, Javi,” you repeat and he smiles. </p><p>“You already said that,” he points out cheekily. </p><p>You bend down and kiss his nose. “Thank you for waking me up.” Another kiss on the shell of his ear. “For taking such good care of me last night.” You take his hand and raise it to your lips, lightly kissing his index finger. “For waiting for me.” Your smile around his skin is borderline wicked as you add, “for making me come.” </p><p>His mouth has dropped open, but it doesn’t seem that Javier’s noticed. He’s too busy staring at you. You, in his bed. You, in his t-shirt. You, looking at him like he’s someone worth…worth loving, perhaps? He doesn’t know what to call the combination of fire and tenderness that washes over him as you move to straddle his hips, but he knows it comes from you.</p><p>“You took care of me,” you tell him, slowly peeling off the shirt to reveal your bare body to him. “Can I take of you?” </p><p>Here a pause where he considers, wetting his lower lip with his tongue. It’s not meant to, you know, but it makes you clench slightly with an unmet, deeper need. </p><p>His consent is whispered but sure; hoarse from sheer want. Javi’s eyes darken to the color of the sea at night: no longer a tidal pool but his own stormy seas seeking solace in your plummeting depths, in all the ways you can cover him. He knows you can wash away the invisible bruise exhaustion has left on his own body in steady motions, cresting and falling in waves of <em>stare decisis.</em></p><p>You make to move between his legs, to put your mouth on him, but he shakes his head. <em>inside, baby,</em> he implores, already reaching for the box of condoms in the nightstand drawer (the drawer just underneath the gun).</p><p>Protest stirs within you. Your gaze darts back and forth between his face and his cock, aching for attention, and you feel your mouth water at the sight of him. But his expression is so unclosed, like a window sash thrown open on a summer’s day. bright and unabashed and so utterly <em>wanting</em> that you cannot deny him. </p><p><em>what’s the magic word, javier</em>, you tease lightly, gauging that he could rapidly become overwhelmed without even realizing it. His shoulders are tense; neck straining with all the emotions his heart rapidly pumps throughout the rest of his body. </p><p>Another brush of his tongue against plush lips before a whispered, <em>please, baby.</em></p><p>You take the condom from his grasp and roll it down his length, unable to resist dropping a soft kiss to his tip. A guttural moan falls from his lips at your whispered good boy as you line yourself up, knees on either sides of his hips. </p><p>Taking his jaw between your thumb and forefinger, you direct him to look up at you and Javier nods, gaze strewn with ragged anticipation as a heady yes ma’am spills from him and into that minuscule space between you. The title undoes you, overflows every conception of time and space and other. There is only what you can give him. Peace. </p><p>Muted cries — yours and his — stifle the honeyed air as you sink onto him, deeper and deeper until you’re filled to the hilt. Resting a moment, your hand moves from his hand to cup his cheek, thumb brushing over his barely-there dimple. </p><p>Something — a shadow, a sunshine, a trickle of sweat beading down his neck — shifts and Javi moves with it, sitting up in a contiguous motion. Javier is a fluid man, capable of rocking back and forth, of swaying in fluctuations and letting them form through him and around him. </p><p>And now you are chest-to-chest with him, bare skin on bare skin, and it is with a gluttonous abandon that you seek out his lips, his fine hair dancing along your fingers.</p><p>Moving against him, it is the steady warmth of your mouth that captures his sigh, pulling away just enough to sink onto him again, again, again. </p><p>Thick hands tighten their hold your back, your ass as you rock faster, aiming to take him even deeper. The moans are more frequent now, more forceful as Javi’s lips attach to your neck, securing over your racing pulse point. </p><p>“More,” he grunts out, blurry against your salted skin and you nod, head falling forward as his own hips rise to meet yours. </p><p>“oh,” you cry out, and Javi does it again, tilting his hips as you come back down to meet him. “J-Javi,” you manage to stutter disapprovingly, “<em>I’m</em> supposed to — fuck — supposed to be doing this.” </p><p>The only response Javier can manage is low groan as you clench, gripping him even more tightly, teeth scraping along your neck. No one has made him feel like this, in all his years and admittedly prolific experience. not Helena, or Elisa, or Gabriela, or even the other girl from the Embassy. </p><p>Is the way you are so young yet wise beyond your years, able to grasp him for all he is while letting him cling to his chosen mysteries? Is the way your confidence is brash and yet unsure, molten enough to soften yet willing to take on more, to learn from him, to let him guide you? </p><p>Disconnected fragments of these swirling thoughts merge into his brain, his veins, clutching at his being and fueling the dire need that swirls around him, inside as you fuck him, as your hands move to his shoulders for stability, as you take him with a singleminded understanding he’s never before encountered. </p><p><em>I’m so close, baby</em> he mutters, finally looking up at you, entranced by the way your skin moves against his and your eyes are blown wide with mottled sources of light (sun, moon, stars). </p><p><em>yes, javi, yes, yes</em> is a tender thing with harsh edges, sharpened by the arousal that pools hot and heavy in your core as you fuck him, or he fucks you; it’s all too slowed down with frenetic energy to parse out the truth. the air is thick it all, the slap of skin on skin as his glistening cock thrusts in and out of you, and the moans that are probably too loud but wrapped in a sparkling amorousness. </p><p>And when you come undone around him sob of his name, and coat his cock with a gush of hot slick, and he follows you with a raspy shout, there is only one thought that occurs as you huddle into his solid warmth. </p><p><em>Someone,</em> you think in rubbery phrases, kissing Javier over and over and over again in the incandescent afterglow, <em>needs to tell descartes he was wrong.</em> you feel too vividly when you are with him to be dreaming. </p><p>[fin ch. 3]</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. interlude: morning routine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi everyone! i know chapter four has been a little slow in coming, so here's a drabble request i filled for these lovebirds over on tumblr. thanks for sticking with this story!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“which one do you think, baby?” javier’s voice comes muffled and still slightly sleepy from the bedroom, and it makes your lips twitch up fondly as you finish applying lipstick. it’s a soft shade, barely noticeable in your view, but javi’s told you before that he likes the way it compliments your eyes. so you keep a tube of the stuff on his vanity beside the chipped cup that holds his toothbrush. it’s almost — almost — a fragment of domesticity. something to say it all (you &amp; him) exists.</p><p>he meets you halfway down the corridor, you bumping into his still-bare chest with a barely discernible thud.</p><p>despite himself, he smiles. it glosses over his features, pulling at his cheeks and lifting the heavy weight from his sodden brow (heavy and laden even now, in the morning, before the day has really begun).</p><p>“which one?” javier repeats again, clasping his hand around yours and dragging you into the bedroom in a mirror of last night.</p><p>this time, though, he doesn’t make for the bed. instead he deposits you beside the small closet, where he extracts two shirts for consideration: a freshly pressed white button-down, or a white button-down with the faintest of grey stripes.</p><p>“<em>cariño</em>,” you say, eyes glancing back and forth between the nearly-identical items, “these are…the same one you always wear.” a laugh bubbles up and you clasp a hand over your freshly-painted lips. “did you buy white ones just because they match each of your suits?”</p><p>javi’s jaw shifts slightly and his sleep-worn eyes dart to the side, the same way he looks when he’s put on the spot at a meeting. you would feel bad if it wasn’t so funny.</p><p>shaking your head, you deftly start unbuttoning the striped number and swish it away from the hanger, circling to his back to ease him into the starched fabric. shoulder muscles pull with the movement. their definition is easy to spot through the thin fabric, the divots and ridges softened by a layer of fat, a protective cloak to shroud him from the bullets both proverbial and real.</p><p>he shrugs them once, twice, trying to get it settle on his sturdy body. it’s like he’s trying shake off what it symbolizes, the reason he’s swapped white shirts and suits and ties for the rainbow shades and tight fitting jeans tucked away in the back of his closet. you’re partial to the teal one, he knows, often ‘borrowing’ it for a few days at a time. if he ever gets around to taking you on a proper date, javi thinks, one that’s not in his kitchen, he’ll probably wear the pale blue one with a few buttons undone. you’ll like that, he considers absentmindedly, relishing the warm press of your palm against his lower back as you move to face him once more.</p><p>biting your lip in tender concentration, you start to button the shirt slowly. fingers thread each button through the next, pushing the plastic through each slot before pulling slightly to make sure it’s secure.</p><p>something in you is at once sad and hopeful as you work your way through the routine action. bronze swathes of skin are slowly closed to you with each button, closing up your access to him, turning him into mr. peña and not <em>javi,</em> or <em>baby</em>, or <em>cariño.</em></p><p>and yet you know, somehow, that he’s never had someone do this to him before, not since he was a child. you doubt that he would have let anyone but you do it anyway, and that familiar swell of affection interspersed with humility trickles outward from its centrifuge in your heart.</p><p>javi is quiet, only marking time with easy, even breaths as he looks down on your lowered gaze and ever-moving fingers. a thumb comes to rest on your cheek, rubbing back and forth in a delicate, comfortable thoughtfulness. a smile blossoms once more; his brooding gaze (already thinking of the files, the phone calls, the longing for you waiting for him at work) softens into rays of chocolate-covered light.</p><p>he swallows your soft murmur upon finishing the task with a kiss, the hand on your cheek falling to tilt your chin up so he can meet your lips with his own. it’s sweet, soft, sure, steady, a sibilant stream of mutually effused affection passing between the two of you.</p><p>“sorry i can’t do your tie,” you mumble, pulling away. he had taught you to unknot a tie but not the reverse skill. you’d never wanted to learn before, never thought you’d need to learn. but now you do; now you want to have any excuse to care for him, to let your hands linger in his vicinity a little while longer.</p><p>javi kisses your cheek. “don’t worry about it,” he says with a wink, as if reading your thoughts. “i can teach you tonight.”</p>
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